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About the Working Paper Series:
This series of working papers is a response to the imperative for targeted expertise in support of constitution building in the wake of the Arab Spring. As one of the primary international institutions supporting constitution building in the Middle East and North Africa region, International IDEA commissioned leading international experts to produce research papers on specific issues of constitutional design that will need to be addressed by states in the region seeking more democratic institutional frameworks. International IDEA, together with Constitutional Transitions, has brought these papers together in this Working Paper Series.
Tunisian Constitutional Reform and Decentralization: Reactions to the Draft Constitution of the Republic of Tunisia
By Jörg Fedtke
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Abstract:
This paper is a commentary on the system of decentralized government set out in the draft Tunisian Constitution of 22 April 2013. It raises a number of general issues relevant to the notion of decentralized government and provides some reactions to the system of local government as envisioned by Chapter 7 of the April 2013 draft Constitution. The commentary begins by investigating the fundamental objectives of Tunisian constitutional reform, and how a system of decentralization might assist in realizing those objectives. The commentary then assesses the system as it is constituted in the April 2013 draft Constitution in light of the objectives of constitutional reform.
Jörg Fedtke
Jörg Fedtke is A.N. Yiannopoulos Professor in Comparative Law at the Tulane University Law School. He is General Editor (with Sir Basil Markesinis) of the book series The University of Texas Studies in Foreign and Transnational Law (Routledge, London and New York 2006-), is the co-editor of Human Rights and the Private Sphere – A Comparative Analysis (Routledge, London 2007, with Dawn Oliver), and the author of “The Judge as Comparatist” (2005) 80 Tulane Law Review 11 (with Sir Basil Markesinis) and “Constitutional Transplants – Returning to the Garden”, (2008) 61 Current Legal Problems 49. Within the framework of the “Democratisation Assistance Programme” of the German Foreign Office, Professor Fedtke has provided expert advice on questions of constitutionalism to members of the Iraqi National Assembly and, in the context of the United Nations Development Programme, for the Office of Constitutional Support (OCS) of the United Nations Mission for Iraq.